Browsing PBH By Articles

Want Democracy? You Won’t Find It With The GOP…Or Obama

The Article: 5 Ways the GOP (And Obama) Have Undermined Our Democracy by Steven Rosenfeld in AlterNet.

The Text: Is Barack Obama — the former constitutional law professor and voting rights activist — allergic to democracy reform? Or have congressional Republicans have thrown up such roadblocks that the White House has decided it’s not worthwhile to fight for the key federal agencies that defend democracy.

Whether the fault lies with the White House or with GOP obstructionists — or both — the results are the same: federal institutions created to make campaign finances more transparent and ensure that election technology is evolving are paralyzed by empty leadership positions, while the executive branch’s efforts to push ahead on its own have yielded little.

“I’ve felt like Diogenes looking for an intelligent Republican and never found one—I am hoping that will change,” said Craig Holman, Public Citizen’s Capitol Hill lobbyist, who puts the blame on the GOP for blocking Obama’s appointments. “But I’ve also been very critical of Obama for not taking on these fights. I’ve been asking Obama since 2009 to replace these commissioners and take on [GOP Senate leader] Mitch McConnell.”

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Those Poor Plutocrats

The Article: Pity The Poor Plutocrats by Gene Lyons in The National Memo.

The Text: Pity the poor plutocrats.

What with Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign having come to an ignominious end, new champions have been called forth lest mobs of pitchfork-waving grandmas and torch-bearing old men rendered fearless by Dentu-Grip breach the walls of their elegant suburban redoubts.

One such hero is Lloyd Blankfein, the universally revered CEO of Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs. At least that’s how anchorman Scott Pelley presented him in a November 19 CBS News interview. Adopting a tone of awed deference most often reserved for British royalty and Hollywood actresses with breasts bigger than their heads, Pelley depicted Blankfein as “one of the world’s most influential bankers.”

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The Links Within The Arab World

The Article: ON THE CONCATENATION IN THE ARAB WORLD by Perry Anderson in The New Left Review.

The Text: The Arab revolt of 2011 belongs to a rare class of historical events: a concatenation of political upheavals, one detonating the other, across an entire region of the world. There have been only three prior instances—the Hispanic American Wars of Liberation that began in 1810 and ended in 1825; the European revolutions of 1848–49; and the fall of the regimes in the Soviet bloc, 1989–91. Each of these was historically specific to its time and place, as the chain of explosions in the Arab world will be. None lasted less than two years. Since the match was first lit in Tunisia this December, with the flames spreading to Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Oman, Jordan, Syria, no more than three months have passed; any prediction of its outcomes would be premature. The most radical of the trio of earlier upheavals ended in complete defeat by 1852. The other two triumphed, though the fruits of victory were often bitter: certainly, far from the hopes of a Bolívar or a Bohley. The ultimate fate of the Arab revolt could resemble either pattern. But it is just as likely to be sui generis.

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Decriminalize Marijuana, See A Drop In Juvenile Delinquency

The Article: Marijuana Decriminalization Drops Youth Crime Rates by Stunning 20% in One Year by Susan Ferriss in AlterNet.

The Text: Marijuana — it’s one of the primary reasons why California experienced a stunning 20 percent drop in juvenile arrests in just one year, between 2010 and 2011, according to provocative new research.

The San Francisco-based Center on Juvenile & Criminal Justice (CJCJ) recently released a policy briefing with an analysis of arrest data collected by the California Department of Justice’s Criminal Justice Statistics Center. The briefing, “ California Youth Crime Plunges to All-Time Low ,” identifies a new state marijuana decriminalization law that applies to juveniles, not just adults, as the driving force behind the plummeting arrest totals.

After the new pot law went into effect in January 2011, simple marijuana possession arrests of California juveniles fell from 14,991 in 2010 to 5,831 in 2011, a 61 percent difference, the report by CJCJ senior research fellow Mike Males found.

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LeBron James, 2012’s Athlete Of The Year

We don’t forgive so much as forget with a title or two. Awe us enough on the field, and we’ll spot you a Mulligan for your misdeeds off it. Call it jock justice. Or the American sports fan way. But ask Ray Lewis. Or Kobe. Tiger may need Jack Nicklaus’ record for true redemption, but the galleries (and TV advertisers) roar like the olden days when he charges on the back nine Saturdays.

Because, the truth is, we want to watch history more than morality plays.

We weren’t fair to LeBron James.

America hated 2011 LeBron James for the preening, the arrogance, and The Decision, yes. But LeBron James was not the first prodigy whose ego outgrew his talents. And he would not be the last. America hated LeBron James in 2011 because he wasn’t The One we were waiting for. But, perhaps, he was The One we deserved.

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